Just announced: Age of Empires Online

They have "Season Pass" bundles which give you all the content over a six month period for $100 (USD), so it won't be $200 unless you like the game enough to spend a year playing it, in which case surely $0.50 per day isn't such a bad deal, compared to spending $50 for a standard game that's probably ten hours long and that you probably won't play all the way through anyway

You are comparing apples to oranges. RTS games (and other games with multiplayer capabilities) aren't a 10 hour affair. I have not played a PC game in over 10 years specifically for its single player campaign. I'm a multiplayer gamer. I played Age of Mythology, an RTS game, online for 7 years. It cost me a total of $80. Now, for AOEO, you've shown a pricing plan that could cost me $100 every 6 months for the same level of gameplay and enjoyment I got from AOM for $5.72 (average) every 6 months (or 3p per day). AOEO is not a good value compared to a lot of (better) RTSs. Ain't gonna do it, cap'n!

(I guess they realised the terrible situation that people are still playing AoK after a decade without giving any more money to Microsoft, and are making sure to fix that this time...)

Such a terrible situation! Blizzard must have been horrified that people have been playing Starcraft 1 for 13 years. Let's forget about pirating for a moment (which was common for SC1, especially in South Korea). I still see Starcraft 1 on the shelves at my local Walmart, right alongside Age of Empires Gold. These companies are still making money off of 10 year old games. That's fine and right. Blizzard found many ways to monetize the popularity of Starcraft too.I really have no point, just chatting.

That costs hundreds of thousands (or maybe millions) of dollars worth of man-hours, so I think AoEO is a relative bargain at any price

Yeah, I love being locked in to pricing schemes and DRM-lite, so I'll go with AOEO I guess. In all seriousness though, at this rate it doesn't look like I'll be buying any new AAA games for a long time. DRM malware junk, Internet registration, pricing schemes, nerfed multiplayer capabilities (check out the difference between Modern Warfare 1 and Modern Warfare 2 in the multiplayer dept.)... I'll be sticking with indie games for a while. Last AAA game I bought was Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare two years ago (at a discount). Gamers have to take a stand against this stuff. Call me a crusader...

-------------------------------------------------

The ultimate problem with AOEO is not its pricing scheme or even its "social" aspects. The problem isn't its cartoonish graphics. The problem is that the core gameplay has NO innovation. The game adds nothing new to the franchise whatsoever. I like the customizable tech trees, but in the end, it's basically the card system from AOE3, and they aren't so much as "customizable" per se... they are basically unlockable features that should be available from the beginning. This is not innovation, but hamstringing. These are steps backward. AOEO is just not that good of a game.

Yeah, I love being locked in to pricing schemes and DRM-lite, so I'll go with AOEO I guess. In all seriousness though, at this rate it doesn't look like I'll be buying any new AAA games for a long time. DRM malware junk, Internet registration, pricing schemes, nerfed multiplayer capabilities (check out the difference between Modern Warfare 1 and Modern Warfare 2 in the multiplayer dept.)... I'll be sticking with indie games for a while. Last AAA game I bought was Call of Duty 4:Modern Warfare two years ago (at a discount). Gamers have to take a stand against this stuff. Call me a crusader...

The next game I'm contemplating is Anno 2070, if the gameplay is anything like Anno 1404 then I'll definitely try it and probably waste countless hours in front of it. Lots of people have been vocal about Ubisoft's extreme DRM, and while that was a massive turnoff, I still purchased Anno 1404 and enjoyed it. I only have one game installed on my computer at the moment, and it's Company of Heroes which I still frequently like to play/mod. 0AD is not classed as a 'game', it's more than that The last game I bought though was Starcraft 2, despite winning 2 out of 3 online matches it didn't entertain me enough, and liked to overheat my old graphics card. I still haven't tried AOEO, the gameplay videos haven't interested me at all, which is disappointing. But it is free...

You are comparing apples to oranges. RTS games (and other games with multiplayer capabilities) aren't a 10 hour affair. I have not played a PC game in over 10 years specifically for its single player campaign. I'm a multiplayer gamer. I played Age of Mythology, an RTS game, online for 7 years. It cost me a total of $80. Now, for AOEO, you've shown a pricing plan that could cost me $100 every 6 months for the same level of gameplay and enjoyment I got from AOM for $5.72 (average) every 6 months (or 3p per day). AOEO is not a good value compared to a lot of (better) RTSs. Ain't gonna do it, cap'n!

The flip-side is with the ability to charge over time, the campaigns can be expanded on, updates can be made to 'balance' PvP so the expected life of the game would far surpass a normal $60 RTS from the store. It also allows you to not spend the $100 - just spent $20-60$ unlocking your 1-3 favorite civilizations if you're not interested in the questing and making your city look beautiful.

I could be wrong though... I don't have a great understanding of their price models and what the various prices offer.

Edit: Thanks Pureon for mentioning Anno 2070, I'm going to follow that game closely. Looks like fun, I've always liked RTSes and to a lesser extent world building/shaping games so I'll probably end up getting it.

To address Mythos Ruler about not buying a game any time soon - I kind of agree. There's one definite buy for me GW2 but that's about all I can see myself getting now. Unfortunately the trends in the gaming industry seem to be moving towards the Phone/Tablet APP games and other games for casual audiences. The Wii sold huge, iPhone/Android App games sell well, Facebook and other social networking games seem to do well.

Maybe we're just being caught at a bad time in the history of the gaming industry - the casual gamer is driving the market. The upside is there's only so much further casual gaming can go, the Wii is out, Microsoft put out their motion sensor thing and there's not much more to expand on in terms of App and Browser games. Maybe in 10 years (or less) - we'll see a return that blends some of the new stuff technology that has been refined and perfected (motion sensors) with the 'hardcore' (all relative when compared with App games) games.

To play devil's advocate, the AoE design time has tried innovative things in the past (AOE3) and it wasn't well received. Bruce Shelly even calling AOE3 a mistake.

I'll ask a hypothetical question: What is the balance between offering something new to players that is innovative vs. familiar? From reading the comments here, AOEO appears to be all too familiar (and in a reduced state) - AOE3 is too different. What does it take to make you happy?

AOE3's core gameplay wasn't innovative either, though. You still had the basic infantry, the counter-infantry infantry, basic cavalry, counter-cavalry cavalry, the same paper-rock-scissors stuff, no tactical innovation at all, formations were again useless, etc. Where it attempted to innovate was at the periphery (Home Cities, Shipments), and even then the innovations were half-assed, IMHO. 0 A.D. will add a bunch of innovation to the core AOE gameplay that will be very effective, IMHO. The thing is, either Shelley or one of the other ES bigwigs (I forget who) even said Age of Mythology was a "mistake" too. The only mistake with AOM was that it wasn't authentic enough, not the innovations. My problem with AOE3 was that they had this great age of technological change, but refused to depict that. AOE1 at least does that. AOE3's era had Napoleonic Wars, firing lines, grape shot, earthen fortifications, things like that, and they refused to depict that. Ships evolved from Spanish galleons to ironclads. They abandoned the feeling of progressing through time, which was what Age of Empires is all about. So, they abandoned some of the basic feeling that made AOE what it was, and then refuse to include innovations to move the series forward. Why move the series into the Napoleonic Age, yet refuse to properly depict Napoleonic tactics? Just a shame. Anyway, just rambling now!

I was 3 years old when AoE was launched. My father and one of my cousins used to play AoE and watching them playing (i was 6 by this time) was how i started to play and to like Age series. But, sincerely, i found this AoEo the most disappointing of all the 5 games. Even my lil' brother could suggest new features to implement this time, but the thing they kept in mind wasn't the quality of the game, was the money they could win with it.

They'll probably not fix all the mistakes of this game 'til the final version, so i'll keep having fun with my old, but really good, AoE: Rise of Rome! At least 0 A.D. gives me hope for the future of the RTS games.

People who try to play it for free are not only disadvantaged in pvp, they are also constantly being bombarded with rewards from boring pointless quests that are useless because you need to pay to use them. Why make free players select from a list of rewards after quest completion when none one of the rewards can be used by free players!!! Well obviously its to scam little kids into harassing their parents to pay for the game. If the parents then agree to pay for their child then they will have the task of constantly having to draw a line between what features they will and will not allow there child to pay for. This is done by the release of crap like the booster packs. And what better way to draw the kids to the game than having cartoon graphics, quests which require the person to be 4 years of age or up to complete, and rewards for completing these time consuming quests. I would rather play runescape! I conclude from all of this that the game was made entirely for profit and targets the most vulnerable consumers possible ( children )which in affect is likely to annoy the crap out parents.

I wont even comment on the game play because i cant get past the fact that the game was created for the sole purpose of making money sucking leaches very happy.

Current age of mythology and age of mythology titans combined online population 33. I will still play aom multiplayer over age of empires online any day of the week!

On an unrelated note when i had a quick scan of this thread i saw that someone said that they are insulted by the cartoon graphics because they felt war should not be portrayed in this manner , not his exact words but i think that was the jist of it. Regardless, i think that cartoons have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do WITH THE INACCURACY OF HOW WAR IS PORTRAYED in the broad scheme of things, if you want to go down that road then you cant just target cartoon games, you must target media institutions, writers, movie makers, government recruiting agencies and that's literally less that 10% of the people and institutions which you would be battling against. Just had to give me opinion.

AoEO definitely looks like a waste of time and money, and at this point I believe Stronghold Kingdoms is far superior based solely on the Kingdoms beta. AoE, AoEII, and AoM were Age of Empires, while AoEO is just trying to be Evony and similar games by the looks of it. I don't even have AoM and I feel like I can say that with confidence. I missed the boat for AoE III, and feel like that was probably a good thing. 0 AD. is definitely what I thought AoE could have become.

Edited by Zeta1127, 17 October 2011 - 08:37 PM.

0

"I'm just a simple man trying to make my way in the universe." - Jango Fett"You are fooling yourself, Captain. Nothing here is what it seems. You are not the plucky hero, the Alliance is not an evil empire, and this is not the grand arena.""And that's not incense." - The Operative and Inara Serra"What you will see, if you leave the Mirror free to work, I cannot tell. For it shows things that were, and things that are, and things that yet maybe. But which it is that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell. Do you wish to look?" - GaladrielClone Marshal Commander Zeta 1127 of the 89th Legion a.k.a. Zachary Skaggs

they may want to make kids love strategy games... so that they will not vanish... it is a great problem of the gaming industry to make strategy games survive. that can't be done cause many have turned to consoles(after they got an online feature) cause they are cheap. just look the sales of call of duty on consoles and then see the number of it on computers...

I like RTS games and history, yet I don't need cartoon graphics, maybe its because I am not a child anymore, and cartoon graphics do have their place, just not in history games.

Edited by Zeta1127, 18 October 2011 - 03:38 AM.

0

"I'm just a simple man trying to make my way in the universe." - Jango Fett"You are fooling yourself, Captain. Nothing here is what it seems. You are not the plucky hero, the Alliance is not an evil empire, and this is not the grand arena.""And that's not incense." - The Operative and Inara Serra"What you will see, if you leave the Mirror free to work, I cannot tell. For it shows things that were, and things that are, and things that yet maybe. But which it is that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell. Do you wish to look?" - GaladrielClone Marshal Commander Zeta 1127 of the 89th Legion a.k.a. Zachary Skaggs

The game was rushed to market in my opinion. It's like the higher ups at Microsoft told the developers and community PR people "We want Age of Empires gameplay combined with Farmville and World of Wacraft" and then they wanted results and money too fast for the time put in and the 'dream' of what the game should be like.

In AoE III the WC and TAD civs were bringing the mess in: as long as you played european civs, you knew heavy inf kills cav, light cav ows heavy cav, which owns light inf, witch beats heavy inf ...ETCI think 0ad could use some of those basic rules; now if historicly some units were exceptional, out of ordinary, ok... but dont give each unit with same weapons different strengths, only because they are from an other civ.I'm looking forward for more regulations at that level for the future releases ;-)